Essays on the history of Byzantium and Southern Slavs. Deman, Litaurin

“Essays on the history of Byzantium and the Southern Slavs” were written by order of the Ministry of Education as a textbook for expanding and deepening knowledge on the medieval history of the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. Until the departure of A.P. Deman in the United States in 1978, the book was recommended to students of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University. “Essays”, however, do not contain a comprehensive presentation of Byzantine and South Slavic history: individual episodes are reduced, others, on the contrary, are described extremely in detail, detailed excerpts from sources are given. Such a selection of material is explained by the desire of the authors to give the reader living and exciting information: it is precisely for this purpose that the book gives a characteristic of the geographical environment, a description of the life of the village and the city, a detailed story about such significant events as the uprising in Soluni and the fall of Constantinople. Many of the questions affected in the book continue to remain controversial to this day. The authors, however, did not consider it possible to complicate the presentation of polemic with supporters of other points of view.